Drawn to Cruising, by Mark Heine...

For me, cruising is an opportunity to experience the stuff of lifelong fantasies, sparked as a kid with my first bottle of Tahiti Treat soda. It’s rebelling against the clock; against that stereotypical 9-to-5 obligation, which is there just to satisfy someone else’s idea of how my life should be lived. I want to explore exotic cultures at leisure, meeting new people and making new friends. To inhale sights that few, perhaps none, have seen. All with the long-term goal of building an inventory of memories and experiences on which I can look back and feel satisfied that I have lived life freely, fully, and on my own terms. To seek out and explore new civilizations ... oh dear.... I'm Kirking again, must be time for the meds.

I’ve been a sailor for a number of years, but I’m just now planning my first long blue water cruise, scheduled for September 2013. We will depart from Victoria, BC, Canada and sail down the west coast to Mexico, lollygag there for a while in the Sea of Cortez while we explore the coastline, and then sail back to Victoria via Hawaii – all told, about 10 months. Tame perhaps, for the real hardcore cruisers, but one step at a time.

Although this will be my first blue water voyage, I’m no stranger to travel. My artist father toured the family all over North America, Asia and Europe to broaden our horizons. As an artist myself, I’ve been lucky enough to have the opportunity to take groups of students on painting tours throughout the world over the past 30 years. In those travels, I’ve seen many amazing sights. It’s easy to say that the grand and monumental things stay vivid in memory. The Great Wall of China, the pyramids, the Eiffel Tower, and the cathedrals of Europe are all hard to forget. They are epicstructures and amazing highlights ... but there’s so much more to enjoy. The culture becomes a blur as we whiz by, bent on getting to the next highlight and making the most of the precious few days we’ve been allowed.

It’s that kind of travel experience that gives birth to a ocean cruiser. In the West, our lifestyles have created a travel industry to conform to modern living: the travel “experience” is sold in neatly pre-packaged bundles that take exactly two or three weeks to unwrap, at a manic pace. (Taxes and airport fees not included, of course.)

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So, what if you want more? What if you want to experience the world in greater depth (excuse the pun), beyond the veneer of the tourist frontage and the mass-production pina colada? The options are limited. There’s the RV, but the idea of mooring my “Slumber Queen” on a 15-square-foot concrete pad in the desert next to Margie and Ralph from Regina just doesn’t do it for me – never mind the environmental implications and cost of the massive fuel consumption. Besides, you would need a really good head of steam to get from Mexico to the Marquesas.

So I choose to cruise. It seems custom made for me. My one and only 9-to-5 experience lasted just three years, during my early 20s. Some 30 years later, I’m still a rebel without a clock. I want enough time to really experience a new culture and gather detailed memories for future recollection. If you are thinking, ‘That’s what a camera is for’, consider that the advent of digital technology has made it so simple to record gigabytes of images that it barely takes a thought. And that’s not the answer for memories. Just how much of your long-term brain RAM can you fill in the split second it takes you to wave the camera and press the button?

I’d like to suggest a time-tested alternative: the pencil. It’s compact, it’s simple, and it floats! In my years of travel, without a doubt, my most vivid memories are of the occasions on which I took the time to sit and sketch; to revel in the details, through the quiet act of sitting still and really absorbing the sights, smells and sounds. I’m not talking about some museum-quality masterpiece. Just something for yourself, or close friends, if you choose to share. I’m talking about a 20-minute sketch, perhaps in a travel journal, mixed in with your notes and observations. In the years to come, one glance at that sketch will bring back so much more than another snapshot. It is often said that photos capture scenery, but art captures culture.

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It’s also a great icebreaker with the locals. In the early 1980s, I took a group of painters out into the rice paddies of rural central China. I wandered well away from the others and set up on a strip of land between two rice paddies, to sketch. Along came a local who began to chatter at me in Cantonese. (I don’t speak Cantonese.) After a while, he gave up and just motioned for me to follow. We walked a long way from the others, and I was getting a bit nervous. Eventually, we reached a small village of a few dome-shaped, yurt-type structures built of brick. I crouched low to enter. The walls inside were black from a coal stove that was the only light, apart from what came in through the small door opening. Squatting on a small block on the dirt floor was a town elder. I wasn’t quite sure if I had been invited, or harvested. Eventually, a cup of hot something was offered to me, and I showed him the day’s drawings in my sketch book. I then sat there and I sketched a portrait of him in the dim light. By this time, the rest of the village had materialized outside and they were taking turns peering in the door. As bad luck would have it, the portrait came out rather well. I really wanted to keep it as a great record of this experience, but I felt obligated to present it to him, in the spirit of international relations (and self-preservation). Not a word of intelligible language was exchanged, but there were smiles all around. I definitely made a connection and had an experience to remember.

So here is Travel Sketching 101, proven and refined by my many guinea pigs in the past. Find a hidden spot, away from prying eyes. Sit down with a cheap piece of paper and draw the view for 20 minutes. Most importantly – and remember this – you’re going to destroy this sketch, so you don’t have to worry about how it looks or who might see it. That will remove the fear of trying to “perform.” Think of the scene as a puzzle of shape and scale that you are trying to solve.

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Forget technique, style, or any other notions you may have of being “artsy.” When your 20 minutes are done, stop. Then sit back and think about how you feel, what you’ve taken in – smells, sounds – use all of your senses. Become fully aware of where you are. You’ve just spent 20 minutes visiting the right side of your brain, which is the creative side. And the creative side has no sense of time, language, mathematics or logic, most of which are the key stressors in life. Which makes it quite relaxing to get in that zone. Now tear up the sketch and eat it (kidding). The act of drawing is a process, not a product.

So the very process is the point. I once met a scholar in the temple of Karnak, on the Nile. He was sketching a cartouche carved in the stone. He had no interest in creating art; he was making research notes, and making the forms by hand was his method of learning the shapes. It’s a tried-and-true process that confirms my point here. The drawings were beautiful. But they were beautiful because they were honest and unpretentious, and devoid of any high, ‘artistic’ aspirations. (He was rather embarrassed by my praise.) The lesson? If your drawings are honest, they will be beautiful.

The drawings from your travels will be visual keys that will unlock all those recorded senses in the years to come. In time, as your artistic confidence grows, you might experiment with style, technique, media, and perhaps colour. There are lots of good books that can help with that. But first, be yourself.

The process of sketching will be tool to achieve at least one of my cruising goals: to slow down, get off the clock, and really drink it all in. I guarantee that it will work for you, too. Give it a try. Mark Heine, SV Saturnus